Ahhh, spring: the season for blooming, for romance, and for spending a long afternoon making up for how little cleaning you did during the winter (it’s time to wash those four cups you’ve had on the dresser since Christmas, friend).
And now, like a newborn bunny-rabbit hopping through a field of wildflowers, our friends at the Constellation Tatsu label have emerged from hibernation with adorable (read: “good”) news: their “Spring Batch” 2017 is just around the bend.
Though climate change has radically altered what we think of as “seasons,” C-Tatsu have anchored us to the calendar with an ongoing, quarterly, reliably excellent collection of releases. Their look for spring 2017 is no different, as airy and all-encompassing as a caftan: we have deep acousti-shoegaze from Russia’s Atariame (who began her work “while living alone among the jungle on a small island in Thailand,” something we at Tiny Mix Tapes would love to hear more about); gentle, aquatic hi-key drone from Fluorescent Heights, balanced by some regionally appropriate chilly/dark ambient from Chicago’s Forest Management (who recorded the music on their record over the last four days of 2016); and melodic, epic, brings-a-tear-to-your-eye atmospheric work from Echolog, which the artist says is meant to capture “a mental state of drifting in and out of sleep” and which sounds to us a little bit like having a nice dream where Friday Night Lights takes place on top of a glacier.
As you sample several fresh new tunes from CTatsu’s Spring Batch playlist right here on Tiny Mix Tapes — where we are proud to premiere tracks from all four albums — perhaps take a moment to reflect on these words shared by Forest Management’s John Daniel:
Residing in a high place of luxury, above everyone else. You look down at thousands of people every night, but they become increasingly distant. A hustle and bustle that’s always present, but up here it’s quiet - your environment is your own. There are countless opportunities to do countless things every year, but as the New Year approaches you reflect on who you’ve been, rather than what you’ve done. Midnight arrives, but it mostly feels the same. You finish the bottle, and come to a resolve in your mind to finally pursue what’s in your heart.
And…speaking of New Years Day!(?) Constellation Tatsu’s Spring Batch of fine, fine records — Fear Is The World by Atariame, Conversions by Echolog, The Elevated Quiet by Forest Management, and Left For Blue Island To Do Research by Fluorescent Heights — will all be available on April 23. If you had to pick just one, you would be faced with a really hard decision. Good thing you can get all four of them! And you should. Thanks for making that easy, Tatsu.
More about: Atariame, Echolog, Fluorescent Heights, Forest Management
